The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions.
Database systems may include databases that have millions of records. To maintain the efficiency and integrity of the databases, searches may be performed to identify and remove duplicate records. Comparison of records against all the other records one-by-one to determine duplication may be significantly time consuming and computing intensive. As such, database designers continuously try to develop techniques that can improve the performance of the database as related to identifying and removing duplicate records.